Pitiless
by Stormcrown201
Summary: Carver's death in the flight from Lothering was a pity, and it was a pity his sister had none to spare. And for Leandra, perhaps, it was also a pity that her daughter would not so easily take the blame.


**Author's Note:** Trigger warning for emotional abuse, of the parental and sibling varieties. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Broken, limp, so fresh that colour yet remains in his face. Blood pools under his shattered skull, stains his hair; his back and neck are twisted and his head hangs back, so that his half-open eyes gaze blankly up at the sky. Ten minutes past, he had been alive. Leandra strokes his face like it could breathe the life back into him, and Bethany kneels next to him and quivers and tries not to sob.

Caissene, who does not run up to him as Bethany just did, walks as though she were going for a stroll, as though she does not understand what has just taken place. But she keeps her daggers out, and her mismatched eyes turn this way and that, observing the darkspawn as they press towards them from a great distance. There is not much time and still less room for weakness. They must move and grieve Carver and his foolishness later.

"Carver, wake up!" Leandra cries. "The battle's over! We're fine!" Caissene joins them as she speaks, but she turns her back to the scene rather than kneeling. She sees a flash of red as Aveline and Wesley join them, but this is of less importance than the approaching darkspawn.

"I'm sorry, mistress," Aveline says, "your son is gone." Just like that, gone. Ten minutes past, he had been alive, fierce and proud and open to so many possibilities. He survived Ostagar—now he has been felled by a single ogre. More than that, he has been felled by his own idiocy. The thought rankles in Caissene, and she clenches her jaw.

"No! These things will not take Carver!" is Leandra's inevitable protest. She never could accept things that did not go her way. Perhaps Caissene should cut her some slack here, for Carver is her son, but this is so much like their mother, and when did she ever care so much about Carver, anyway?

Caissene sweeps her eyes across the hillock one last time, sees the darkspawn pressing still closer, then at last deigns to gaze upon her mother and her brother. "If you fall apart now," she says, voice cool and controlled, as though Carver were not dead, "you endanger us all."

But Leandra can no more tolerate criticism of her behaviour than she can anything else that does not go the way she wishes it to go. She glares up at Caissene, and her eyes are full of a familiar spite that Caissene has so often seen in them. It is as the spark and the kindling both at once to the fire within her, and she answers the look with a glare of her own. "Don't you lecture me," her mother hisses, and her voice drips with contempt and blame. "This is _your fault!_ How could you let him charge off like that? Your little brother! My little boy!"

She looks back down at Carver, but the words are as much of a spark and as good kindling as the spite in her eyes—better, perhaps, for what had been just a fire moments before now becomes a raging inferno. "Oh, go fuck yourself, Mother!" Caissene snaps, interrupting Bethany as she herself speaks, and Leandra snaps her head up again to look at her, and this time there is nought but surprise in her face.

Bethany lets out a choked sob, murmurs a, "Caissene, _please_…" but Caissene pays her no heed, only lifts her head and looks down at them all as though she were the height of a human man rather than an elven woman, and her face is full of the same contempt. It mars her features, twists her bloodless lips into a scowl and contorts the planes of her face, but the strange part is her face looks more natural that way, as if rage mixed with bitter, poisonous resentment is its default expression.

"If you want to blame anyone," she continues, and her voice rises despite the danger that causes, "blame Carver! He charged off without calling for backup! He tried to take the fucking ogre head-fucking-on even though he saw them at fucking Ostagar and knew what they can do! _Big fucking surprise_ that this happened! You've got no one to blame for this but _him_, and he's got no one to blame but himself! And before you start shrieking that I should have stopped him, I was fucking surrounded by hurlocks and halfway across the field from him! So fuck off, _Mother!_ Don't spit your blame where it doesn't _fucking_ belong!" She jabs her finger at Leandra in emphasis of the point and her words, and spittle flies from her mouth, though where it falls is perhaps better left to the imagination.

"_Caissene!_" Bethany wails, and the tears pouring down her face do nothing to soften Caissene's gaze or her heart. "Please!"

Aveline and Wesley stare at Caissene with disturbed expressions on their faces. "He's your brother," Aveline says, and disbelief colours her voice. "How can you speak of him in this way?"

"I have no pity for idiots," Caissene says at once, and her voice is as dismissive as it is harsh. "Even less for the useless fucking old bitches that they give their lives to defend. At least Carver could contribute something other than standing around, wailing, and pointing fingers when things go wrong. Fucking ridiculous. What did he die for, anyway?"

Wesley shakes his head, narrowing his eyes in what Caissene supposes must be incredulity. As she glances at him, she notes that he has gone pale, and blackness is creeping up the veins of his neck, but that's no problem of hers. "If this is how you feel about your own family," he says, "then I am very sorry for you."

"That's no business of yours, templar," she says. "But I didn't ask to be stuck with the job of harbouring an oh-so-helpless, oh-so-innocent, and oh-so-_lovable_ apostate and looking after my useless fucking mother for the whole of my life." Again, his eyebrows bounce with surprise, and though Caissene does not look at them, she can feel the hurt radiating from Bethany and Leandra—not that it matters to her. Tasteless, yes, to insult them both so viciously over Carver's fresh corpse, but hurting them is all the freedom she ever gets in this life of hers where her parents shackled her chains to Bethany without bothering to ask her if that was what she wanted.

She's not good for anything else, anyway.

Still, she sees that she will not prevail upon them to move without proper rites, as if a few prayers will make any difference when only building a pyre and burning Carver can save him from being eaten by the darkspawn. "Do whatever you're going to do," she says, as harsh as ever, "but do it quickly. If you tarry, don't come crying to me, begging me to pull your arses out of the fire." So saying, Caissene turns around and walks away again.

"Caissene, come back!" Bethany shrieks as soon as she takes her first steps away from them. "He's your _brother!_ You should be mourning him with us!"

Caissene spares her another contemptuous glance. "I'm sure I'm not wanted," she says, and for just a moment, her voice is sickeningly sweet in the way feigned sweetness always is. "Besides, somebody has to watch out for the darkspawn, since Maker knows you twats won't. As for Carver, I'll mourn him in my own time, when we're _safe_." Then she turns away, and the stiffness of her back and finality of her words make it clear to Bethany that there will be no further discussion.

After a moment's awkward silence, Wesley begins to commend Carver's soul to the Maker, and though she stands distant, separated from the rites in more ways than one, Caissene listens. Along with it, in her own mind, she recites, _"The Light shall lead Her safely through the paths of this world and into the next. For She who trusts in the Maker, fire is Her water. As the moth sees light and goes toward flame, She should see fire and go towards Light. The Veil holds no uncertainty for Her, and She will know no fear of death, for the Maker shall be Her beacon and Her shield, Her foundation and Her sword."_ There are no candles to accompany the verse, but it will do.

And perhaps, in the depths of rage and bitterness, there stirs in her heart a hint of pity that belies the words she spoke to Aveline, and perhaps some of the anger is directed at Carver being lost when he was so young and full of potential. Perhaps there is even a twinge of regret that they could not get closer when they were both so unhappy, so directionless, and so full of resentment. But those deeper feelings are for later, and whether tears will follow is another question. Caissene's fury dried up her tears long ago, or that is what she thinks. Maybe this will draw some out of her again.

But for now, there are only the darkspawn, the strangers she distrusts, a sister who she despises for their parents' favouritism and for being everything she will never be, a mother she loathes and who loathes her, the corpse of the brother who was the stronger fighter but resented her anyway, and the same mindless fury that has ever sustained her. There need not be anything else.


End file.
